The land of pharaohs: The more Egypt changes ...

November 27, 2012|Paul Greenberg | Tribune Media Services

No doubt many an Egyptian misses Hosni Mubarak and the familiar tyranny they had grown accustomed to, the way some Russians still pine for Stalin's oppressive rule. At least there was no question of who was in charge back then -- even if the next knock on the door might mean a government-paid vacation in Siberia, or worse.

Slavery does have its enchantments, its stability however deadly, its fleshpots if you're a house servant rather than a field hand. Witness the faux nostalgia for old times down on the plantation with Old Massa presiding over a happy scene from "Gone With the Wind," however false the image.

Evil can be romanticized in the imagination, and certainly in official histories. See the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, where faces of old leaders had a way of being air-brushed out in every new edition as today's Hero of The Revolution became tomorrow's unperson.

Even now the revolution that overthrew Egypt's last pharaoh is being reversed by its new one. Across the Middle East, the bright Arab spring turns to the usual winter of stunted hopes.

This familiar process isn't confined to our own time, or just the Middle East. It may be the natural course of modern revolutions, which still follow the pattern set by the French one, and make the American Revolution the great exception to a dismal rule -- a revolution that somehow brought liberty and order, thanks to a founding generation unmatched by revolutionaries elsewhere.

. . .

Washington, Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison ... where else do you find their counterparts? And our ever with-it intellectuals say America isn't exceptional. Tell it to the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the tempest-tossed to whom the word for hope is still America.

Recommended reading: "The Anatomy of Revolution" by Crane Brinton, the classic that charts the progress, or rather regress, of modern revolutions as a series of shock waves from left to right till the pendulum reaches its Reign of Terror, then pauses as it reaches the end of its arc (Thermidor) and begins to swing back -- till a new tyrant succeeds the old, and it isn't always easy to tell the difference. Except that the new commissars and reichsministers may be crueler than the old czars and nobles.

. . .

See the latest news from Cairo, where this year's pharaoh has declared his regime above the rule of law, that relic of Western colonialism. Mohammed Morsi has announced that there will be no appealing his decrees to Egypt's increasingly ignored courts. It happens again and again: The same revolutionaries who overthrew the old regime now reinstate it under new management.

The new Egyptian president courtesy of the Muslim Brotherhood now has decreed that the old one be retried, the mob not yet having exacted the fullest measure of revenge on his predecessor. Yet he's been careful not to order any retrial of lower-level types in the state's security apparatus so he can count on their thuggery when needed.

The protesters and anti-protesters will be coming out in strength in Cairo and Alexandria and other Egyptian cities. The moment for protest, rallies and shows of public support or lack of it is usually Friday, the Muslim sabbath, after prayers at the mosque. It's almost a sabbath custom by now in the new but never really new Egypt.

One of the shouters in Tahrir Square, the customary flash point for the revolution of the moment, came up with about the worst name he could call the country's current president and future strongman ... European! Or as he put it, "People have lost faith in him. Anyone who takes such immature decisions can do anything to us, like establish a religious state similar to the dark ages of Europe."

Indeed, the current withdrawal of one Middle Eastern "republic" into the veil of Islam, complete with hijab and averted gaze, does begin to resemble the Europe of the Inquisition and auto-da-fe. See the slow slide of Turkey from Ataturk's dream of a modern state back into Ottomanism. But it's doubtful that the young, urban and restless in Tahrir Square will have any effect on the dead weight of Egypt's unchanging fellaheen.

On the other side of whatever revolution or counter-revolution is going on at the moment, there is this comment from an anti-protester who ventured into Tahrir Square to say a few words in defense of Egypt's president-becoming-dictator: "How can President Morsi achieve what all the masses have been yearning for and then be punished, that's the big question."

As usual, speech may reveals more than what the speaker intended. Whenever someone uses that most un-American of phrases, The Masses, you can be certain that he'll soon be defending a dictatorship in their name.